


etchings

by queenofcawdor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Bisexual Male Character, Gay Male Character, Hogwarts Fifth Year, M/M, abraxas malfoy as the dark lord, but he's controlled by diary tom riddle, dursleys are assholes, excessive references to heathers, i've decided the potter family hails from sierra leone, interracial harry potter, the au where tom riddle fucked up and put 6/7 of his soul into the diary, the malfoys are full of themselves but are not nearly as bright as their teeth, tom riddle is good at many things but he is not good at math-verse, tom riddle meditates every morning for 30 minutes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofcawdor/pseuds/queenofcawdor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Riddle had figured out how to split off one-seventh of his soul immediately, and he decided to do that after the death of Myrtle. He messed up in his calculations, however, and left only one-seventh in his body. He made Abraxas Malfoy into a Dark Lord, with his diary guiding him and that one-seventh of a soul possessing Malfoy. When Malfoy attempted to kill an infant Harry Potter after his parents, the spell rebounded and transferred Riddle's soul shard to Harry. Lucius kept the diary, before he develops a nefarious plan for Potter's Fifth Year,</p>
<p>That's all small potatoes to Harry, though. He's gay in a world that will never, never accept him, and now, his new diary doesn't just write back, a very attractive boy lives in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	etchings

"Time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad."

\--Niccolò Machiavelli

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Marvolo Riddle leaned back from his equations. He had figured it out—how to split his soul immediately into sevenths. One-seventh would go into his diary; the rest his physical body would retain. Muggles were good for some things, it seemed. Especially their mathematics. He would have to keep those in the Wizarding world he would establish. Thinking on this, he made his silent retreat from the Chamber of Secrets,  clutching his diary.

He slid into bed and slept. He hoped the Basilisk would manage to kill a Muggleborn by then.*

*Tom Riddle had very complicated views on Muggleborns. Magic was beautiful and pure. Muggles were ugly and tarnished. He appreciated the magical strength and occasional wisdom they imparted upon the Wizarding world. However, the risk that befell the exposure was too great (he ignored the fact that without home visits, he would not have been trained).

\--

Harry Potter thought it was hilarious that the Dursleys had removed him from his cupboard under the stairs. He had long ago equated it to a closet.

Harry Potter was gay. He also very much remained in the Closet. The Muggle world was growing in acceptance as awareness grew. The Dursleys, however, were not supportive of the “damn queers.” The Wizarding world had been stagnant for centuries. They still regarded magical minorities as lesser beings. Human minorities also faced prejudice, from “purity” of blood to race.

He remembered the story Binns had once recounted of the Native American Two-Spirit Muggleborn who had managed to travel forwards in time. The spot in space where they had been standing 250 years prior had shifted to a small town in Wales. The Muggleborn was apparently some kind of dark magic user known as a Skinwalker, but the animal forms they took looked kickass in the textbook. Anyways, once the British Magic Ministry at the time discovered them, they were executed for Dark magic usage (a spectacular feat, given that Dark Lords, who in almost every case in written European history have been white, have never been executed. Always, always imprisoned).

Harry did not feel comfortable knowing that the Ministry was always ready to execute a gender minority and racial minority. In any event, he was far from coming out. He felt lucky enough that the Potters were respected for their money, "even if their skin was a bit unusual."

He sat, stewing in his bedroom, when he heard a tap on his window. A barn owl had a package for him. He hadn’t received anything all summer—why now?

He absentmindedly paid the owl (looked a bit posh to be sending him presents) and opened the package.

Brilliant! A used diary. Formerly the property of one “Tom Marvolo Riddle.” Why would he ever want to read the angsty shit of a dude who used a _diary_?

(it was a fun name to say. his lips curled around “marvolo.” damn good name.)

He opened the diary.

An blank first page stared back at him, crisp. Something inside Harry clicked into place. He reached for his quill.

\--

_Dammit. Damn it all to Wizard Hell._ This was crisis mode. That chick who was always fawning over him had been killed by the Basilisk. _Shit_. It was way too close to the entrance! He quickly took the fracture of the murder on his soul and ripped it out and sent it into his diary.

Tom Riddle screamed. No one heard him. He sat, trapped within blank pages, and cried.

He had messed up in his equations, and only one-seventh of his soul remained in his physical body. Tom Riddle’s body picked up his diary, and he went into the Slytherin dormitories, where he left the diary with Abraxas Malfoy.*

Teachers wondered why Tom Riddle’s grades dropped so severely. He was still head of the class, but his level of raw power had fallen to a normal amount.

However, they soon turned their affections elsewhere. Abraxas Malfoy had rapidly gained an impressive knowledge of magical theory, almost overnight. And after another Muggleborn turned up dead, followed by Riddle’s body...they were happy that Abraxas possessed such a large jolt of energy afterwards.

(after hogwarts,  armies of wizards gathered together to show support for their pureblood lord, a new dark lord, who would rid the magical world of muggleborns. they did not realize how insignificant they were, pawns of a malfoy. malfoy himself remained  oblivious to his being a pawn. inside his diary, tom riddle smiled. his puppet strings began forming a web, a layer of conspiracy working underneath a lie. a shard of himself lay inside a blonde fool, and most of him controlled the lesser man.)

In a few decades, Abraxas Malfoy abruptly died after failing to kill an infant child. Tom Riddle felt his soul shard pierce into the child’s head. It left a jagged line on his forehead.

Tom Riddle sat, trapped in his diary, until Abraxas’s son, Lucius picked him up and carried the leather-bound book home.

Tom Riddle was frozen for fourteen years before a nasty piece of handwriting spent ink into his pages.

*Tom Riddle had fancied Abraxas for a while. He was gorgeous.  Of course, Tom Riddle far exceeded him in that department, but Tom had grown up with propaganda telling him about a pure race, a master race, with pale skin and light eyes and blonde hair. To him, Abraxas was even more “pure,” with his pureblood status. The crush vanished when he realized that Abraxas was not a homosexual, nor was he all that engaging of a conversation partner.

“Oh, how was your break, Abraxas?”

“It was peaceful.”

The boy couldn’t tell a story if the brothers Grimm were whispering into his ear. Tom did not approve.  

\--

“ _Hello, Diary. My name is Harry Potter.”_

Harry felt like an absolute fool at that. Who the hell talks to a _diary_? How lonely _was_ he?

He blinked before looking again at the page, where his words were reforming into crisp, elegant letters.

_“Hello, Harry. My name is Tom Riddle. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”_

“ _How the hell are you writing back?”_

“ _Magic. This is something of a memory vault from when I was fifteen through sixteen.”_

_“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Why is your diary blank?”_

_“My teen-angst bullshit had a body count. I tried to get away from that.”_

_“Why did you kill someone?”_

_“My reason at the time was a quest for order.”_

_“I get that chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, but really? Killing people?”_

_“What year is it, Harry? I’ve been in here since 1943. I’ve had time to think about my actions. Meditation is surprisingly easy here.”_

_“It’s 1995, Tom. By the way, can you talk to anyone besides me?”_

_“No, I’m a bit stuck here, if you can’t tell. I have enough magic stored that I can theoretically come out of the paper, but only you could hear or see me. If I had a bit more life force, I could permanently come out, but I’d need your permission for that.”_

_“Oh, well. I might give you that once we’ve known each other a bit longer. Just…”_ Harry’s ink was hesitant, slowly etching into words. “ _I’m gay.”_

_“Well, if I were heir to the Potter fortune I’d be jolly myself.”_ Right. Forties.

_“No, I’m … homosexual.”_

_“Oh. I’m a bit like that, I suppose. I like girls too, but boys themselves are rather easy to fancy.”_

_“That’s called being bisexual.”_

_“There’s a word for it now, then. Pleasant. Why are you telling me this?”_

_“No one else knows.”_

There was a pause, before:

_“Harry, you_ do _realize I’m not actually a diary, right?”_

Harry sensed a deeply seated sarcasm. “ _You definitely were in Slytherin.”_

_“Very much so.”_

_“Wait, can we try talking with you out of the diary? I don’t have a face to put to your dickish handwriting.”_

_“It’s not dickish. It’s elegant. And neat, unlike some peoples’. But yes, I will leave now.”_

Harry let go of the diary, and a tall, beautiful boy rose out.

“Hot _damn_ , Riddle. Who held you by the ankle in Styx? How are you that gorgeous?” Harry had dropped his jaw along with his filter, as it turned out.

“You realize you said all of that aloud, yes?” Tom Riddle shook out his hands. _God._  His _hands_.  Lean fingers with callouses from wand work. No inkstain means perfectionist. Harry looked into dark eyes that set a fierce contrast with dangerously pale skin.

“I meant it.” Harry fidgeted at those eyes staring at him.

\--

Tom looked appraisingly at the boy with his Horcrux in his forehead. Besides the oddly shaped scar, Harry showed promising features. Fiercely lit green eyes set in a light brown face, with tight black curls  neatly kept on top. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was called, but he did recognize the style from Wool’s Orphanage.

(at wool’s, tom remembered seeing a small boy with an accent who had immigrated to london from a colony in british west africa called sierra leone who had that hair. gideon had tried the style as well, but his red locks couldn’t fit the style.)

Harry was very short, and his glasses did not fit his face, but his eyes and hair were mesmerizing. Tom realized he was staring and stopped.

Harry realized he was staring and kept doing so. In fact, Harry felt very comfortable staring at Tom for as long as he wanted. Until, of course, a pop sounded and a lumpy house elf with big eyes and ears stood and yelled at him.

_“Harry Potter must not return to Hogwarts!”_


End file.
